Setri at around 12 hours old
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Yesterday Gam and I watched an episode of Family Guy where Peter, Joe and Quagmire attempt to track down the source of the world's dirty jokes. Making an unapproved detour from what is supposed to be a couples' holiday in Maine, Quagmire diverts the attention of the unsuspecting Bonnie and Lois by asking them what childbirth is like- both launch into a lengthy bout of nattering that lasts the entire trip, not noticing that Peter has driven them all the way to Virginia instead of their destination in Maine...
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I think Setri was settled in his cot for a brief period before the midwife on duty came to give him his third heel prick test for blood glucose. He was, as noted during the two previous such exams 'not a bleeder', and screeched his head off as she tried to squeeze blood from his little heel. I took him into bed with me to feed and settle him.
When the midwife came by again to check on me/us and saw a dozing Setri snuggled into the crook of my arm and sleeping peacefully, she noted “he's still there”, in a disapproving tone, reminding me fairly stridently of hospital policy that “co-sleeping is not allowed”. I was not only fully awake but fully aware of the policy and trying to delay the inevitable by staying awake for as long as I could so I didn't have to put him in the crib.
I was tempted to try and stay awake all night just to thumb my nose at the hospital's policy. Instead, I waited a little while, figuring I'd put Setri in the crib after he had some clothes. While I was buzzing, mentally, I was physically exhausted. I should note that the midwife was hardly a nasty stern type, she had been perfectly nice, and she was only stating hospital policy. I harbour residual bad feelings about her for other reasons- ones that also aren't particularly her fault.
Not long afterward I heard Gam's voice. It was around 1am. I strained to hear him, thinking there was no way he was going to be allowed down to see me so long after visiting hours had ended, and just hearing him made me feel good, even though I knew he'd spend an hour in total on the return visit to the hospital just to bring Setri some clothes that fit. I was so happy when the midwife brought him in to see me. Gam changed Setri into a jumpsuit, which turned out to be a mistake on our part. We thought we were doing the right thing, dressing him in one more layer than we would ourselves, as per all the baby advice... advice that doesn't seem to apply to 12lb babies. Setri went into the crib. Gam kissed us both goodbye and told us that he loved us. He turned my phone onto silent and left it under my pillow so I could contact him if I needed to. I cried quietly, after he left.
I finally dozed off into a light sleep for about half an hour before waking with a start and wanting to check on Setri. I practically leaped out of bed when I saw him lying still and with no noticeable breathing movements, felt his little face was cool, and joustled him to see if I could rouse him all within a millisecond. He screwed up his face and tossed about but thankfully didn't wake. I watched him as he fell asleep, noticing the slight rise and fall of his chest that I'd missed in my brief parent-panic. I slunk back to bed feeling a bit silly, but very grateful he was ok.
It wasn't long before Setri stirred, hungry. I got him out of his cot for a feed. That was lovely. It was when we first really started making eye contact and I started to bond with him. I told him not to worry and that him and I being separated from his Daddy was only going to last a few more hours. Just a handful more hours until 7am. It really wasn't long. I had no idea just how long those few hours would turn out to be.
After Setri dropped off to sleep I watched him for a long time, several times almost dozing off myself. After a while he woke and started to fuss. I offered him a feed, but he was only slightly interested, and the fussing escalated into crying. As he cried he turned red and broke out into a sweat. I felt really bad for my ward-mate as I tried to settle him, but I wasn't concerned. He was a newborn- I was expecting plenty of crying! Profuse sweating, too, was normal.
According to a lot of the 'baby information' I'd read, the next thing to check for if crying in a newborn isn't explained by hunger is a wet or dirty nappy. I pressed the button to turn on the fluorescent light above my bed so I could see, but the bulb flickered, then died.
Somewhere in the maze of switches was one for another light that the midwife had earlier switched off herself. I didn't dare try randomly pressing buttons given that most of them were coloured bright red. For all I knew, pressing them could have set off alarms and flashing lights... So I pressed the call button for the midwife to show me where the other light switch was. That was my second mistake.
She wanted to know why he was crying. I wasn't sure, I told her. He wasn't wanting a feed, so I was checking for a soiled nappy but the bulb had blown. She turned on the other light and helped me open the fasteners on the jumpsuit while Setri struggled and yelled. The nappy was fine. The midwife told me she didn't like the way he looked. He was breathing a bit hard, she said. He'd just been screaming his head off, I pointed out. It was normal.
Apparently not- the midwife implied that a newborn crying was abnormal. He was also a bit red in the face- he'd been a bit flushed after the birth and had turned quite red while crying. She also implied that this was abnormal. I was bemused. Would I let her take him down to Special Care Nursery for a paediatric registrar to take a look?, she asked. I replied that I didn't think it was necessary- what she'd been worried about was a result of the crying; he seemed to be settling down now, he'd be fine. She was very insistent. I asked her to give us half an hour and then come back. I figured he'd be asleep by then.
Setri was fine, for a while. I talked to him, told him not long now, we'd soon be home. He peered at me out of his cloudy newborn eyes and stared into my face. We'd discharge ourselves earlier than the 24 hours and we'd all be home as a family, I told him. I stroked his silky soft, chubby cheeks. He had a brief feed and seemed to be about to doze off again. I watched the clock, hoping he would hurry up. Someone was threatening to try and take away my baby.
Then at maybe 25 minutes- 5 minutes before the midwife was due to return to check up on him- Setri started bawling again. I offered him a feed and he suckled briefly. I proudly noted how well he attached and how naturally breastfeeding seemed to come to him. But it wasn't a feed he wanted: he stopped, furrowed his brow, and it wasn't long before he'd started squalling again. I couldn't understand, but wasn't worried by that. Plenty of new parents take some time to figure out the more obscure things that might be making their baby cry. He settled down after a couple of minutes but was still breathing heavily when the midwife arrived.
She arrived after about 35 minutes and turned up the light. Setri's head was snuggled into the crook of my arm and he was still a little red in the face from his latest cry. The midwife still didn't like how he was looking, again implying that this was abnormal. I sighed inwardly and pointed out that shortly before her return he'd cried again. She again implied this was abnormal and asked to take his temperature. It was 37.3. “A bit high”, she claimed. I wondered when all the rules had changed and 37.3 had become a high temperature. She took his pulse and then told me he was “a bit tachy”. I thought she meant his heart was beating a bit fast (tachycardia) but she didn't bother to correct me and tell me she'd been referring to his breathing (tachypnoea), something I only figured out after she'd left. Given that Setri had been feeding just fine and didn't appear to be struggling for breath, just breathing fast, I really did not think it was a big deal. She was so insistent that she be allowed to take him to Special Care for assessment by a paediatric registrar that I said yes. She said I could come if I wanted but she had given me the impression he would be brought right back, so I said I would wait in bed. This was around 5am.
She came back alone. She told me the registrar had admitted Setri, and explained all the 'reasons' why... essentially everything that had concerned her before, including the 'high' temperature. The fact he was a 'Mec Baby' (meconium in the waters) meant they were being extra cautious. I understood that. But he was fine. The midwife and registrar had been observing him for a couple of minutes; I'd been observing him for hours. There was, at that point, nothing to worry about. But the doctor had admitted him- perhaps I had been wrong? There was a seed of doubt in my mind. Still, I concentrated on holding it together and I thanked the midwife.
When she left I burst into tears. If my room-mate hadn't been doped up from the painkillers she was taking for her stitches (after an 8lb baby, it turned out), I would definitely have kept her awake. I hoped she was asleep, figuring she'd probably hate me after being disturbed by Setri's crying, then mine. First they'd taken me and Setri away from Gam. Now they'd taken Setri away from me and I was in hospital all alone. I'm ashamed to say that's the way I thought of it at the time- not that poor little Setri had been taken away and was all alone! I wasn't worried about feeding- he'd just been fed and I figured they'd call me when he needed a feed. So naïve.
It was nearly 6am, just over an hour until Gam was due to arrive so we could spend the day as a family before Setri and I were discharged in the evening. So much for that. Still crying, I sent Gam an SMS telling him that Setri had been taken to Special Care Nursery. I expected a reply almost instantly, but Gam had finally fallen asleep. I had slept for less than an hour, making 5 hours total in the last 48 hours, so I figured I'd try and snatch an hour's sleep before Gam arrived.
I woke at 7:20am and a tray of breakfast had arrived but there was still no word from Gam. I smsed him again but didn't ring, knowing he probably hadn't been able to fall asleep for a long time- and he'd been up trying to tidy up the house a bit to make it nice for Setri and I to come home to. I assessed the breakfast: preservative-laden orange juice, Weetbix, Trim milk, a full-fat vanilla yoghurt and cheap tea. I drank the orange juice and choked down the gluey-tasting yoghurt, not feeling hungry but knowing I should eat as I still felt a bit weak after the labour and had barely eaten anything for 24 hours. I would have liked the tea but couldn't bring myself to drink skim milk. I dislike Weet-Bix, but stashed the little packet for later, knowing lunch and dinner would be even worse.
The new midwife on duty came around to introduce herself and explain the postnatal care stuff she would go over with me a bit later in the day. I was glad not to have to see the previous midwife again. I told her my baby had been taken to Special Care and asked where the nursery was- the previous midwife had not told me where I could find Setri. She said she would walk me down there herself. I said I was expecting my husband to arrive soon and she said to just come and find her and she would walk us both down.
Almost immediately after she left I received a phone call from one of the nurses at the Special Care Nursery telling me that Setri was now allowed to feed and was I breastfeeding him? I had a brief 'WTF?' thought at that- no-one had informed me that he hadn't been 'allowed' to feed. It was around 8am, about 3 hours after his last feed before they took him away. I could come down any time to see him, she said. I thanked her and told her I would be expecting my husband very soon and we would come down together. I still hadn't heard from Gam but I was expecting to very soon.
It was only a minute later that I received a second phone call from the Special Care nurse telling me that Setri was awake and he wanted a feed NOW! I told her I'd be right there, sent a quick SMS to Gam and hurried off to find the midwife. I couldn't find her but was helped by someone at the ward reception and found the nursery easily on the floor below.
I think it was nursery number 6 that Setri was in when I arrived- he would be moved first to 10 and then 12, I think, by the end of that day. The room was full of isolettes (unsure of the spelling- kind of like a humidicrib) but I recognised Setri's yell and knew immediately where he was. There was a nurse at his isolette patting him and trying to soothe him til I arrived. She told me I'd have to wash my hands and don a gown, as per the nursery's policy, so I practically fell over in my hurry to do so and finally be allowed to hold my baby again.
Having been in an isolette at a rather warm temperature, Setri needed some kind of clothing before I could hold him. The nurse noted that they did not have much in the way of clothing for babies his size, and that his jumpsuit from the previous night could not be worn with the monitoring equipment he had attached. She eventually found a kimono-style top that had obviously been hand-made to accommodate such hospital accoutrements.
The nurse found me a chair and handed Setri over before fetching me a footstool and breastfeeding pillow so I would be more comfortable. Setri had all sorts of wires coming off him, and he'd been cannulated and had a drip put in. All the various 'bits' made positioning him for a feed rather difficult. I wasn't aware at the time that the drip was a glucose drip and should have dampened Setri's appetite. He certainly showed no signs of this, and latched on hungrily.
Gam arrived shortly afterward, apologetic for not being there for me (he wasn't allowed to be there or he would have been, I knew that) and for falling asleep and not getting my SMS sooner. I was so glad to see him.
After Setri was fed, he was put back in his isolette and I stood in order to walk back to the maternity ward with Gam, who had brought me some breakfast. Immediately I felt quite lightheaded, and felt something trickle down my legs: I was bleeding on the floor. Ugh. I didn't feel quite so out of it that I wasn't immediately mortified, but Gam and the nurse immediately sprang into action to clean everything up and the nurse arranged for a wheelchair to take me back up to the ward.
That was how I came to spend the rest of the day in a wheelchair.
It was actually quite a relief, and not so unnecessary that I felt embarrassed. The feeling as if my entire upper body were balanced precariously on my spine had made my solo trip downstairs a slow and nervous one. I might've made it through the birth intact but I didn't feel as if I'd made it through in good shape. Upstairs in the maternity ward I changed my pad and kept a close eye on things in case I was experiencing excessive bleeding, but I was fine- obviously, embarrassingly, I had just not changed my pad in time to avoid that incident.
While I attempted to eat the hospital lunch (always some insipid variation on meat and 3 veg) we discussed what we had been told about Setri's incarceration. I picked the tasteless pumpkin and watery beans from my plate and recounted to Gam the events of the night after he left hospital. It all came back to a dodgy light bulb.
Setri had been started on a course of prophylactic antibiotics via his intravenous drip, and after 3 doses was due to remain in hospital a further 24 hours for observation. That meant we'd be allowed home on Thursday. Thursday! Not just one, but three nights without Gam. Three nights in hospital with a normal, healthy baby after a better-than-normal vaginal delivery. In hospital, with Gam sent away every night, there were many things he would ordinarily be helping with that I was having to do on my own. I was sore, I was having trouble moving around. I didn't feel particularly confident about showering on my own, I was having to get up every time I wanted so much as a drink of water, and there was nowhere comfortable to sit and feed Setri in the hospital. I would be much better cared for at home, and so would Setri. No way, we agreed.
Setri had no evidence of infection: his temperature had remained normal, a chest x-ray had come back clear and his blood oxygen saturation was perfectly normal. Although they had sent a blood sample off for culturing, the only symptom he exhibited of anything was a higher than normal respiration rate- something the registrar admitted could occur in perfectly healthy babies. We resolved that if he continued to be fine and there was no evidence of infection we would discharge him against medical advice. As a compromise, we agreed, we'd offer to bring him back to the hospital every 12 hours to finish the course of antibiotics.
The next time we visited Setri to give him a feed, he'd been moved to another of the Special Care nurseries. What this meant- whether it was to do with an improvement in his 'condition' or simply some bureaucratic shuffling of the nursery population- we weren't told. “He's been moved to number ten”, the nurse said.
Setri, as usual, fed like a champion. We marvelled at his scowly expression and again how heavy he was. I pondered his straight, shiny hair: would it turn curly? Maybe, maybe not, Gam said, jokingly claiming that he wanted to give Setri a haircut already to remove what he called Setri's 'toilet swirl' of long hair on the crown of his head. We pored over his 'furry' ears, with their multitude of tiny dark hairs and one oddly-shaped 'double' earlobe, and squeezed his little Michelin-man arms. Such a sturdy baby compared with all the frail little things in the other cots: tiny premies with translucent skin, pointy faces and tubes up their noses. When they cried they sounded like kittens, while Setri roared like a lion. Problems with his lungs? We were cynical.
I had earlier eaten a packet of Grain Waves chips from a vending machine after my tasteless lunch but by 2pm or thereabouts Gam had still not eaten all day, so after some nagging from me he wheeled me downstairs to the food court, where he purchased a steak sandwich and a coke. I had the better part of a small 'iced coffee'-flavoured milk.
At around 3pm I announced that I wanted to spend a couple of hours in the nursery with Setri. Gam agreed and wheeled me down. I took a book, not wanting Gam to get bored. Setri had been moved again, to nursery number 12 this time. Number 12 was noticeably colder than the other nurseries, and most (all?) of the babies were in cribs, not isolettes. There were fewer babies in number 12: twin boys, obviously born premature, of a middle-aged woman with long brown hair, and a tiny baby with a huge, pompom-like shock of black hair, belonging to a young, photogenic aboriginal couple. There was a 2-person seat up the back of the nursery near Setri's cot, and the young man greeted us and moved from it in order to allow us to sit down. His partner gave us a shy smile and said hello.
It seemed to me that there exists a kind of understanding between parents visiting the nursery, especially the ones whose babies were relatively new to the place. It was easy to pick those whose children had spent a lot of time in the place, probably first in Intensive Care before eventually coming to Special Care- they seemed almost blasé about their surroundings and less likely to shoot sympathetic glances in the direction of other parents. Their visits often seemed perfunctory-carrying out a feed then leaving immediately, for example. I suppose it was the only way to get on with life. For many, their babies would be spending months in the place before being allowed home. We could have it a lot worse, we told ourselves. At the same time I felt alienated. No-one really understood what it was like for us because, unlike the other parents, our baby didn't have a reason to be there. I felt like a prisoner, but also a fraud.
The young nurse in Number 12 was lovely. She told us he would be allowed to come upstairs to the maternity ward that night, and removed his IV. It was only when she mentioned it was a glucose drip that I finally twigged- I had assumed it was solely for delivery of the antibiotics. She asked about Setri- everyone was curious about Setri on sight because he was so big, and even more curious when they found out just how big. She inquired as to Setri's gestational age then noted sympathetically that it was common for babies older than 40 weeks to have meconium in the amniotic fluid. We knew, but it was nice to have someone seem to acknowledge that Setri was perfectly normal.
An older nurse marched in shortly after that, taking over from the young nurse, who she chewed out for not checking the level of glucose in his IV and gradually lowering it before removal. The young nurse had just been following orders. The older nurse seemed surprised that Setri had been feeding all day- he had been on a high level of glucose, she said. She had smoker's breath- not as if she had just smoked a cigarette, but the breath of a person who had been a smoker for a long time. Inappropriate to have a smoker looking after vulnerable infants in a special care nursery, I thought. They carry the residue on them, even if they don't smoke around the babies, and the dangers of 'third-hand smoke' are becoming more widely known.
Around 6:30pm we had carried out our first nappy change- Setri did not fit into the newborn-sized disposables, and needed the next size up. The young nurse went hunting for nappies of a suitable size. Gam performed the change. It was just a wet nappy, but I'd never done it before. The idea of fumbling through it in front of nurses who could just about perform the task with their eyes shut was somewhat daunting for me! Besides, Setri had been taken away. I couldn't help feeling that if I appeared less than competent in any area they would hesitate to give him back. Everyone kept asking if he was my first baby. I felt it was as if I were wearing a sign proclaiming I didn't have a clue how to look after him- this was probably just paranoia and the question, like all the others, had more to do with Setri's size: having a first baby that large, let alone vaginally, is very rare.
Setri then wanted another feed. The older nurse informed us that after this feed he would be discharged and we could take him up to the maternity ward. He would have to return for another dose of antibiotics in the morning. Given the amount of glucose he had been getting, the nurse obviously did not expect Setri to feed until 7pm, which is what he did! Another older nurse getting off her shift then gathered all the relevant files and folders together (during my stay I marvelled many times at this primitive system and its lack of electronic records) and wheeled Setri up to the ward in his crib, while Gam wheeled me in the wheelchair.
Dinner had been held for me. The main meal was different to lunch but really just the same. I ate the tasteless frozen vegetables and then forced myself to consume most of a stodgy sandwich of supermarket-grade multigrain bread, plasticky, mild-flavoured cheese ('Swiss', I think), and something that I initially believed might be seeded mustard but upon tasting appeared to be a rather revolting attempt at pesto. Gam hung around while I ate, drawing out his visit (visiting hours ended at 8pm). A nurse had told us that sometime during the night someone would come around and wash out Setri's cannula, but as we talked over 'dinner' we resolved that there would be no more intervention and no more antibiotics and that when someone came around I would inform them that we would be discharging Setri the next day and therefore would like the cannula removed. Gam kissed Setri and I goodbye around 8:30pm, promising to bring breakfast so I could eat some real food.
“I love you both,” he said.
I waited until he left before I allowed the tears to come.
It sounds silly in hindsight, but at the time I thought it would all somehow be less upsetting for Gam if he didn't see me cry.
